DM Thoughts on Session 8

After tying up the Sealers of the Stone Maw arc, I wanted the party to set out on their own.

I gave them a notebook belonging to Brenda, with notes about nearby oddities, which could lead to quests. I wanted to explore the idea of “episodes” with this leg of the ongoing campaign; letting players explore alt characters if they wanted, and hopefully having each session be its own succinct and distinct event, instead of bleeding from one session into another, like in the Sealers sessions.

Session 8 was definitely a low point for the campaign. With the departure of Bearchief, we picked up a new player (who should have been in it from the beginning, had I remembered a drunken promise), and the combat introducing the character dragged on and on, in spectacularly unsatisfactory ways, since it was all 1v1 combats. 

By the time the spiders were downed and we reached the cultists, the session was half over (we’re adults, and can’t play all night). 

I had originally guessed that the party emissary, Turnin, would waltz right up and ask what just was going on in that compound of theirs. The party would then RP a bit (something they said they wanted to do more of when I got some feedback after Sealers) and learn about the place, and then probably either:

1) Start a series of fight encounters to clear out the cultists and eventually their evil demonic leader pulling the strings.

2) Investigate the cultists and the camp in a series of social encounters, befriend some, sneak around, and find some way to defeat the demonic leader.

Well, the party threw me for a loop, opting to forego any RP, investigation or reconnaissance, and jump right into a plan of assassination, all while splitting the party no less. They were caught flat footed by the suddenly appearing shadow demon, and the entire session felt really disjointed, and was definitely our worst session to date. No one really tried to RP anything, and the whole thing just seemed to flop (though it did lead to the wonderfully memorable WTF exchange between Zyn and Shadowale, who BOTH immediately decided to murder more sleepy cultists).

It was getting late. The demon was slain, but the party was in a tower, which was surrounded by cultists and was also on fire. We couldn't wrap it up quickly, so I called the session on a cliffhanger.

As DM, I took the session failure hard. I don’t think there was any other way to take it as DM. Fortunately, two things happened: 1) we realized we're adults, talked about what was particularly bad about this session, and then set about trying to improve our sessions. 2) someone wanted to run Mines of Phandelver, and try their hand at DMing that. So, with that starting up I had a few weeks hiatus to work on the cultist stuffs, and see what I could do to help salvage that story.